winter writin wrap zine spread

my friend's story:

I would ask than what, but one look into your eyes, which seem now to be almost tinged with gold–no, they are tinged with gold–and I think I know.

“Okay,” I respond, after a beat. “Okay.” As I unscrew the bottle and shake two capsules out for you and me, I wonder briefly what the sabe will taste like this time. In the past it’s been peppermint, formaldehyde, coffee grounds. I crush the pill between my teeth and it’s earthy–like cool, damp soil in the shade of a tree in a silent forest; like hot, soupy air teeming with life at the apex of summer; like a creature throwing its head back to let something inside come undone. The taste sends a shiver down my spine, and I sit back and wait for the onset as the train drifts ever onward.

Ω.

We’re still on the train when it hits me, right as we’re going through a tunnel. I’m staring at you absentmindedly and all of a sudden the light and shadows flitting across your face look almost gelatinous. I reach out to touch you and the pliancy of your flesh beneath my fingers makes me gasp. Our eyes meet; yours are black holes, like your aperture is at its lowest setting. I want to be pulled into your gravity, my molecules spaghettified beyond all recognition before my mass melds with yours forever at the center of all things. You bare your teeth, and for

8 look how much clearer the image is

9

an instant I think you’re really going to swallow me whole until I register that you’re smiling.

I grab your wrist and I can feel the hum of the train’s kinetic energy contained within your pulse–not contained; just passing through. Something about that notion makes me giggle, and the warmth burbling forth from my mouth expands to form a protective bubble around just the two of us. This never gets old, the feeling of slipping just underneath the outermost membrane of our reality, viewing and feeling and smelling and tasting everything through a warped, thin layer of semi-permeable material.

You pull me through a little when you say, “This is our stop,” and we traipse onto the platform. It’s stopped snowing, and the sun is just now breaking through the clouds. The refraction of the light through the glass dome of the platform is forming a rainbow on the ground right in front of you and me and it takes my breath away. It’s a sign, I think to myself fleetingly. But even in my altered state, I wave the thought away as irrational. Still, it’s hard for me to tear my eyes away as we walk outside.

The slowly melting snow makes everything look like it’s covered in brilliant, dazzling glitter, or maybe tiny shards of glass. I am afraid to touch anything, for fear that it will crumble upon contact and blow away in the wind, or that I’ll get cut. Everything is precious and impossibly delicate.

love u james this is amazing<3